Complete noob...whats involved?

Retr0gamer

You're not going to be making AAA level titles. For games that a person solo or a small team can make then there's plenty of tools out there to do the job. The thing about C++ is you have full control over everything you want to do. I'm trained up in Corona and have an app/game coming out soon that I worked on but for my own work I have lots of ideas but I can' work on them until the graphics 2.0 patch comes out. If I could get into the display code like C++ will let me I wouldn't have these problems.

I also wrote some pathfinding AI for the app. It runs like a dog unless the levels are designed to disguise this limitation. For stuff like this which requires a lot of messing around with arrays/tables you can could it an awful lot more efficiently in C++.

Really the tools are there to make very good indie or small game projects with the likes of Unity, gamemaker, Corona etc. But C++ will give you better control and if you are looking into getting into the industry then stuff developed in C++ will be a massive boon.

Torakx

Is making your own engine a massive project?
If none of the other engines use C++ I might have to do it all from scratch.
How long a process would it be to learn enough to start making a game?
2D or 3D.

Maybe C++ is something I might try to work on an hour a week as I train up with Gamemaker and Unity 3D.
I'm already working on unity with C# and GML.
Can't even find time to do some fun stuff, like photoshop painting or 3D modelling

Carpo II

Torakx wrote: »

Is making your own engine a massive project?
If none of the other engines use C++ I might have to do it all from scratch.
How long a process would it be to learn enough to start making a game?
2D or 3D.

Yes making your own engine from scratch is a big undertaking. Someone who knows what they are doing could spend months creating one from scratch. There is simply a huge amount to do before you can even start working on a game.

But there are other options. The book I recommended in a previous post, Game Coding Complete, will give you such an engine and explains how it works and, more importantly, why it works that way. It goes through memory management, asset management, rendering pipeline, audio, a scripting plugin (using lua), the works!

Or you could use something like SDL. This will give you all the kinds of things that unity gives you but instead of using an editor, you manipulate it directly through C++.

There really are a lot of different options out there for whatever you want to do, but before taking on something like building even part of a game engine in C++ you need to be sure it is something you want to do (there WILL be many times when you want to throw your keyboard out the window when you can't understand some bizarre compiler error).

The upside to all this is you will gain a more complete understanding of what is going on in a game, how it all works, what impacts performance and everything else, than you will from pretty much anything else (and pretty much everything else will be a joy to work with afterwards :pac:).

satchmo

From my experience, here's how the average game programmer progresses...

School: [Basic, Python etc] is awesome - look at what I made!
1st year of college: C is awesome - look at what I made before it crashes!
4th year of college: I am a C++ master! I now know everything about the language and programming.
1st year of game development: Maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did. But I do know that C++ is superior to everything else because of X, Y and Z.
4th year of game development: C++ has some problems, but it's still the best for making games.
8th year of game development: There's got to be a better way of doing this...

I still like C++ because of the versatility, low-level control and performance. There's also no real alternative - C++ is the only language you can use for console development. But in terms of productivity it's far from perfect and there are a bunch of edge cases where it doesn't do what you expect it to.

Having said that, I do think it's far and away the best language for learning how computers fundamentally work. And once you know C++ well, learning most other languages is fairly easy.

ChRoMe

You need to choose if you are making a game or an engine. You won't have resources to do both.

witnessmenow

I know the thread has progressed but I just want to throw my opinion on the question in the title.

The most important thing that is involved is dedication in my opinion. Time heals all wounds makes all games.

There is tools & tutorials out there to suit whatever level you are at. Don't try and find the perfect enginge, layout your minimum criteria (what platform etc) find one that works for you in terms of your knowledge and skill sets and get building a game. Doesn't matter if its good bad or indifferent you will learn from it and will come back better for the next one.

Manage your scope, dont get carried away with your first couple of projects. If anyone has played my game Soc-car there probably hundreds of hours worth of work in that game and tbh it is a simple enough game. I am also working as a software developer for 4 years and have done a decent few side projects so I am a reasonably experienced developer (although none of it was games) so if it is taking me hundreds of hours to make a simple game, you can imagine its going to take someone with less experience longer

I made a game at the Derry game craft a couple of weeks ago, I wrote it 100% from scratch (I had no lines of code already written before going there). I had an artist working on the art and sound.

The game was completely simple, there was a platform and user controlled "warriors" that tried to bump each other off the edge (it looked isometric, but mechanically it was 2-d). So basically it would be difficult to make a simpler game and other than 3-4 hours where I slept I worked on it for 24 hours and it wasn't properly finished (I had no overlay to display the time or player scores and no way to restart). I also had some parts of Soc-Car I could borrow (controller inputs etc) so even the simplest games take time.

Kilgore__Trout

satchmo wrote: »

C++ is the only language you can use for console development.

Hi Satchmo,

Saw a trailer for Watchdogs recently. The hacking mechanic looks like a real leap forward from the usual tps in terms of gameplay. Nice work. I buy very few full price games, but am severely tempted with Watchdogs!

I'm working on my first game at the moment, which is a 2d shooter with bells and whistles, developed in Unity(C#). Will initially release on Windows then Mac and Linux, but I've been considering the possibility of releasing to the next gen consoles as a long term goal.

I know with the new consoles moving in that, things are up on the air, but are there issues with releasing an undemanding game made with Unity on consoles? Or (as CarpoII pointed out) does Unity do okay, because it's running C++ under the hood?

Thanks!

ChRoMe

Kilgore__Trout wrote: »

Hi Satchmo,

Saw a trailer for Watchdogs recently. The hacking mechanic looks like a real leap forward from the usual tps in terms of gameplay. Nice work. I buy very few full price games, but am severely tempted with Watchdogs!

I'm working on my first game at the moment, which is a 2d shooter with bells and whistles, developed in Unity(C#). Will initially release on Windows then Mac and Linux, but I've been considering the possibility of releasing to the next gen consoles as a long term goal.

I know with the new consoles moving in that, things are up on the air, but are there issues with releasing an undemanding game made with Unity on consoles? Or (as CarpoII pointed out) does Unity do okay, because it's running C++ under the hood?

Thanks!

Unity does just fine on consoles

satchmo

Yeah Unity should be fine performance-wise, unless you're doing something particularly intensive. And yes, it's written in C++ (except the editor's UI which was written in C#).

However to release a Unity game on console, you'll have to pay a hefty license fee that the regular Pro version fee doesn't cover. I don't know what that is (you have to contact Unity to get a quote), but I would guess at somewhere in the low to mid 5-figure range. You'll also need to officially create a company, get first-party approval, and pay for age rating. You'll probably also need to get an external publisher, although Sony seems less finicky about that part.

First-party approval will probably be the hardest part - things are a lot easier than they used to be, but the platform-holders want to keep the quality of games released on their platform very high (for good reasons, nobody wants an equivalent of the Apple Store on consoles), and so will be very picky about what they choose to approve. Having previously released high-quality titles will help a lot.